


i've learned to love the ugliest things (like you and me)

by itsactuallycorrine



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Heated Conversations, Kate is ANGRY, Love Confessions, Post-Season/Series 03, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsactuallycorrine/pseuds/itsactuallycorrine
Summary: Kate only worked with Seth & Richie for two years before Seth was caught and sent back to prison. Six years later, he's released and when he visits, Kate finds she has a lot to say to him.





	i've learned to love the ugliest things (like you and me)

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy, it's been a minute since I finished a story, and I definitely never expected to come back to this fandom five years after I wrote my one & only fic for this pairing. But one rewatch later, I proved I am still trash for SethKate.
> 
> This is definitely not a fluffy piece--at least, not totally--because one of my favorite parts of Seth & Kate's dynamic is how they whip from heated bickering to tenderness, and I wanted to try and capture that and the anger Kate would feel if Seth kept up his too-protective-for-his-own-good kind of behavior.
> 
> (Also, let's handwave the fact that there's no way in hell Seth would only have to serve another 6 years; we can pretend Freddie pulled some strings or something.)
> 
> Title from "Restless" by Sleater-Kinney
> 
> Enjoy!

Kate hid a wince and pretended to fuss with the lock on her apartment door as it closed behind her, taking a beat to work up a smile before she turned. “Good morning, Duncan.” She tucked her bag over her shoulder and made her way down the hallway.

Her neighbor feigned surprise, falling into step beside her, as he did every morning when she found him lying in wait for her. “Good morning! Off to work? Need a lift?” He ran a nervous hand over his thinning mousy hair and pasted on his own shaky smile, just this side of endearingly crooked. 

It was the same routine he’d been pulling the entire three years Kate had lived across the hall, and she was torn between wanting him to take the hint already and waiting for the flash of impatience behind his eyes at each rejection to come to fruition. At least the latter promised some excitement. Sometimes she dreamt about ramming her fist through his face when he eventually snapped, a dark simmering anticipation she tried to ignore. 

Even though it had been over half a decade since her last physical fight, she knew she could take him; he was small and slight and at least a decade older than her, and would never expect a girl like her to fight back. To house a well of rage and pain so deep that it scared even her. To have been a passenger in her own body while something not of this world tapped into that well and ran free with it. 

But she couldn’t afford to make waves, not yet, so she just kept smiling. She was good at that. “Thanks, but I’ll take the bus.” 

Duncan, like always, was not deterred and followed her, spouting off statistics about crime on public transportation. Kate made all the appropriate listening noises and bit back her sigh of relief as they came to the building’s outer door. 

“I appreciate the concern,” she said, like always, “but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.” She let a few more teeth show than normal with her parting smile. “You have a good day, now.”

With a pep in her step from finally shaking her shadow, she made her way down the steps to the sidewalk when a lilting whistle stopped her cold, a specter of a previous life running its fingers down her spine.

The bag on her shoulder dropped to the pavement, and she turned and froze. Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint as the blood rushed to her head, her lungs seizing, and her extremities going numb. Backlit by the morning sun, a silhouette in a three-piece suit stood, resting lazily against the driver side of a gunmetal gray muscle car. 

It wasn’t the sunlight or the car or even Duncan’s concerned voice fading into the background that broke through her paralysis; it was a single word, in a voice shaky and breathless enough she hardly recognized it as her own: “Seth.”

And then she was running with no regard to her work heels or their audience or anything except the open arms waiting for her as she slammed into his chest and wrapped her own arms around his neck. “Seth,” she whispered into the lapel of his suit jacket as his arms came around her, firm, warm. Home.

“Kate.” His voice was as low and uneven as hers, and the sound of it broke something open inside of her, light pouring through a crack in the wall of a dark cell. “Kate,” he said, again and again, pressing his face against the top of her head, her hair catching on his short stubble. A faint tremor wracked his body, and Kate’s mimicked it, leaving her gasping as the tension seeped from her muscles.

After a few long moments, Kate pulled back, laughing wetly as she looked up into his face. “I can’t believe it’s you. I can’t believe you’re here.” She let her gaze map his face, noting the differences—a few new lines around his eyes and mouth, far more salt than pepper at his temples—as well as the similarities—his dark hazel eyes, his smirking lips, the cut of those dimples. “Look at you.”

He choked out a laugh, callus-roughened hands tenderly cupping each side of her face. “Look at me? Look at you!” His lips parted on a shaky exhale and he shook his head. “God, I can’t believe… It’s just—it’s been a long time.”

“Six years,” she agreed, but a hard, hot ember had started burning in her chest, and the words inflamed it, until the fury consumed her. “Six. _ Years. _ You unbelievable _ asshole.” _ Before he registered the change in tone, she leaned back and landed a quick, hard jab to his solar plexus, like he’d once taught her in a Mexican hotel room a lifetime ago.

Seth doubled over as the breath rushed out of him. “Jesus! Some welcome wagon,” he strangled out. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” Kate hissed. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, Seth. Six years on my own, with only the occasional email from Richie. He wouldn’t let me visit or write or anything.”

With a hand still pressed to his midsection, Seth stood and looked away for a minute, then sighed deeply as he shut his eyes. “I told him not to. It was for the best, to protect you.”

A high-pitched noise escaped Kate that would probably mortify her later, but it gave Seth enough warning to snap his eyes open and twist to avoid the knee she aimed below his belt. He winced as it bounced off his hip instead. “Goddamn! Enough!”

“You son of a bitch!” And with that, all the anger drained out of her, and the ember rose into her throat instead, a hot ball of grief and loneliness. “You son of a bitch,” she managed with a hitch in her voice, before the tears started falling silently. She turned her face away from him in shame, even as he gathered her into his arms.

“No, no, princess. Don’t cry. Fuck, this is so much worse.” One big hand cradled the back of her head while the other pulled her close to his chest. “Let’s go back to kicking and punching, huh? I’ll let you beat the shit out of me, I swear. Just… don’t cry.” His mouth pressed against her temple as he murmured apologies.

“Uhhhh, is everything okay over here?” a hesitant voice asked, and Kate wiped a weary hand over her cheeks.

“It’s fine, Duncan,” she said without opening her eyes. “Go to work.”

She could hear his hesitation. “Are you sure? You missed your bus. I can—I can still give you a ride, if you need.”

“She said she’s fine, asshole, so move along.” Seth cut in, and Kate’s fingers dug into his sides in warning. Not that Seth heeded it. “Who the fuck are you anyway?”

Kate pulled back, flashing him a dark look. “Stop. He’s my neighbor.” Turning, she gave Duncan a small smile. “Thanks for checking, but it really is fine. This is an… old friend of mine, so I’ll probably just take the day off to catch up with him. Please, Duncan. Go to work.”

He met her eyes, although his gaze kept jumping back to Seth in quick, nervous twitches. “If you’re sure…” Sighing when she nodded, he handed her bag over. “I’ll see you later, Kaycee,” he said in a grim voice, with a parting scowl at Seth, and it was the closest to threatening she’d ever heard him.

As he walked away, she turned back to Seth in time to watch the slow, inexorable rise of his brow. “Kaycee?”

Kate pressed her lips into a hard line and shouldered her bag again. “It’s a long story. Come inside while I call my boss and let her know I won’t make it in today.”

* * *

As she assured her boss that she’d come in the following day and apologized for the short notice, Kate watched Seth prowl around her tiny apartment, touching her books and framed photos, inventorying her DVD collection, and generally nosing around in her entire life. She’d be lying if she said it wasn’t surreal having him in her space, but it also felt natural.

She hung up as he shed his jacket, draping it along the back of her armchair. 

“It’s a nice place,” he said, cutting a look her way. 

Kate sat at the edge of her sofa and waved him into the chair. “A lot better than a six-by-nine cell, I’m sure.” When he only grunted at that, she winced. “Was it terrible, being back?”

Seth barked out a humorless laugh. “It wasn’t paradise.” He took a seat, sprawling out in the chair, and met her gaze evenly, jerking a shoulder when she stayed silent. “It was what it was, and now I’m out. Again. And hopefully for good, and without having to look over my shoulder all the time.”

“Is that honestly what it was about?” Kate asked skeptically, brow furrowed. “Paying your debt to society?” She snorted. “Obviously you’ve let that aptitude for bullshit lapse in the meantime.”

He smiled, all teeth. “Oh, I can still sling it when I want to. And I can also smell it a mile away. So why don’t you cut the inquisition short and tell me what the hell you’re up to, _ Kaycee?” _

Kate sank back against the cushions and spread an arm out along the back of the sofa, widening her eyes. “What makes you think I’m up to anything? Can’t a girl just want a fresh start?” She ignored the frisson of awareness tripping up the nape of her neck as Seth stared her down, pretending his fathomless eyes weren’t peering right down into her soul. 

The silence laid heavily over the room, until one corner of Seth’s mouth tipped up. “Yeah, you’re up to something. It’s fine, don’t tell me. It’ll make it more fun when I find out anyway.” Jerking his head towards the hallway, he asked, tone overly casual, “Is it just you here or you got a roommate or anything?”

“Just me,” Kate answered, striving to match his tone despite the hitch in her heartbeat at what he wasn’t quite asking. “There hasn’t been anyone in… a while.”

He hesitated. “But there was someone once?”

She nodded, dark pleasure washing over her at the infinitesimal tightening of his features. “A few years ago. It didn’t last long. All the things I couldn’t and wouldn’t say added up, until it was too much to bear. But you know how that goes, right, Seth?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” When she shrugged, he rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t come here to fight, Kate. I wanted to check up on you, make sure you were doing okay, see if you needed anything.” He met her gaze with a bland one of his own and a wave of his hand. “Need anything?”

Something mean and bitter bubbled up and made her say, “The last nine years of my life back,” before she could stop it.

“Great.” He frowned and leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees. “Jesus Christ, a guy tries to do the right thing for once in his life, and he’s still the fucking villain of the piece. I get it—I’m the whole reason your life went to shit, and just as we were finding some semblance of a routine, it all got flipped on its ass again because of me. But you had an opportunity to set it all to rights yourself these past six years, and if you didn’t, then that’s not on me.” 

“What exactly were you expecting me to do, Seth?”

“I don’t know, go back to school, get married, have babies. Get your life back.” His mouth twisted down at the corner. “I think we all knew your days of running game were numbered from the start. It was never gonna be enough for you, not really. Me going away just accelerated the timeline a little.”

She stared at him, jaw clenched tight, and hoped like hell her hurt wasn’t all over her face. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “I’m so sick of men who think they know how I should be living my life. Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve done the best I could with my circumstances, and if you don’t like it, you can go back where you came from or go to hell for all I care. As long as you’re going.”

Climbing to his feet, he huffed out a laugh and gave her a lazy mock salute, grabbing his jacket by the collar. “Always a pleasure, princess. Don’t be a stranger. God knows you’ll need to find another reason to pin your fucked-up life on someone in the future, and I guess we both know that’s one of the only things I’m useful for.”

Kate stood as well, crossing her arms tight. She should’ve known, from the moment she saw him, that this was coming. He’d tapped the well, and it felt bottomless in that moment, like she’d never run out of bile to throw at him. “Don’t do me any favors. I’ve gotten by on my own this long. I never needed or asked you to help me. Like it has been from day one, I get taken along for the ride until you decide it’s time to leave me behind. At least this last time around, I learned to watch my own back so I didn’t end up with a bullet in it.”

Seth crowded her, close enough that she could feel the waves of fury pouring off him. When she refused to quail at his intimidation, he pointed one finger in her face. “That is a low fucking blow and you know it. If you had an ounce of sense in that pretty little head of yours, you would’ve done then what you should’ve done now, and moved on and lived the life you were meant to live.”

“How? How could I possibly go back?” Dropping her arms, Kate shook her head. “I told you before, the girl I was is long gone. So stop trying to force me back into that neat little box. I’ve outgrown it, and I am not about to make myself smaller to feed your little fantasy that you can, what, save me? You can’t. Not anymore. I make my own choices, and I live with the consequences. If you cared about me at all, you’d respect that.”

That gave him pause. “Is that really what you think? That I don’t respect you? Care about you?” The fight drained from him at her answering nod and for a moment, he looked every second his age. 

With careful and controlled movements and wary eyes, Seth flung his jacket to the side, stepping closer, close enough that his wingtips touched her toes. When she didn’t pull back or stop him, he closed his eyes on a long exhale and pressed their heads together. 

Kate let her eyes fall closed as well, felt the tension loosen in her shoulders and the anger melt away, leaving only shame and fresh grief. Couldn’t it ever be easy between the two of them? Were they always meant to fall together and apart in violent conflict? 

Pushing those thoughts down, she focused on memorizing the way his skin felt against hers in case it was the last time it ever happened. Cataloged the dark woodsy scent of his cologne, the hitch of his breath across her lips as she pressed her palms to the smooth wool of his vest over his rib cage, the brush of his nose against the side of hers, the heat of his hands as they found her hips. It wasn’t enough, would never be enough, but it was still so much more than she’d dreamt of for years.

His voice was little more than a rumble in his chest as he asked, “When Amaru touched me, you saw my soul through her, right? Like Richie does when he drinks someone’s blood? So you have to know that’s bullshit. I care. I’ve cared for a lot longer than I want to admit.”

Kate shook her head the slightest bit without breaking contact. “I felt your guilt, and your grief, and your anger—brief little bursts of each, like emotional buckshot. She was consuming your soul entirely, so it wasn’t the same as how it is for culebras, or at least how Richie and Scott have explained it, where I might see your memories or learn things about you.”

Seth jerked back, and she tried not to flinch at the sudden motion, staring up at him in confusion. He stared back, mouth gaping. “Are you shitting me?”

Kate frowned. “No, why? Was there something you thought I’d seen?”

“Yeah, everything.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and stepped back to pace. “Jesus Christ. I thought you’d seen… And for _ two years, _I thought you were, I don’t know, healing or some shit, but you had said, well, you know, and so I was being patient. I was waiting it out. And once again, I get fucked over for trying to be noble.” He laughed, a dry painful sound. “And then it all went sideways anyway when some enterprising Barney Fife put two and two together and picked me up as a person of interest for that Dos Rios job in California, and even though they didn’t have anything concrete on me, I cut a deal to serve out my original sentence because I couldn’t let them find out Richard was alive or that you were working with us.”

She sat down hard on the sofa, watching him closely as he confessed all this in little more than a mutter. “And that’s why you didn’t want Richie doing his eye thing to try to get you released. You were protecting us.” 

“Oh, wipe that scowl off your face. Of course I was protecting you. And don’t start in with the bullshit about not respecting you. That’s what family does: it protects you.”

It was like a slap in the face, and made her feel eighteen and naive and ashamed again, for even considering—no matter how briefly—that he’d see her any other way. “I am not your little sister, Seth.”

He turned to her then, arms akimbo. “Yeah, no shit. Pay attention here. I’m saying something important.” She waved him on, _ by all means, _and his lips curled for a swift beat of amusement before his previous intensity set back in. 

Clearing his throat, he propped his hands on his hips, pulling his vest tight over the still-taut plane of his stomach. Kate managed to drag her eyes up, but not before he caught her, if the kindling heat in his gaze was anything to go by. But the heat at least seemed to burn away his nerves.

“What I thought you saw and had known all this time, is that I love you, Kate. I’m in love with you. I have been for a fucking long time.”

Her breath caught and it was like that morning all over again—God, had it really only been a few hours since he blew back into her life?—her vision narrowed and her heart stopped, and he appeared before her like all her best dreams and worst temptations. “Seth…” 

But he doesn’t stop. “I know I’ve been gone six years, and whatever you may have felt at the gate of Xibalba has likely been killed by time or distance, or maybe you never even meant it that way to begin with. But there it is. Full disclosure. And that’s why I will always try to protect you and will always want more for your than my piss-poor excuse for a life, because you deserve it, Kate. Everything I did to you when we first met, I did for my own selfish ends, and I took you with me after the Twister for the same reasons. But you—getting to know you, and seeing that goodness and light in your soul… You were a miracle, and I had stopped believing in them a long time ago. Didn’t want to believe in them, to be honest, because miracles have to be earned, and I sure as shit wasn’t about to make the effort when it’d just be taken from me in the end like everything else. 

“And then you were gone, miracle lost for good—or so we thought. I tried to blame Richie and Carlos, and eventually Amaru, but I knew whose fault it really was, and I had to set it to rights. I almost lost you twice that day in Matanzas, but, miracle that you are, you come strolling right out of hell with Richard at your side.” He shook his head in wonder. “How could I not love you? How could I not want to give you the world or the fucking heart from my chest if you asked for it? When you came with us instead of Scott, it felt like, I don’t know, getting the girl and riding off into the sunset at the end of the movie, as cheeseball as it sounds, even if I never believed you would stick around for long, could be happy living that kind of life.”

As he fell silent, Kate struggled to articulate the swirling thoughts in her head. “You never said—I never even suspected. Or if I ever wondered, I assumed it was all one-sided and I was projecting. Two years… we lived side-by-side for two _ years _and neither one of us bothered to speak up.” She looked up at him, the hot sting of tears pressing behind her eyes. “If we had…”

Seth sat next to her, running a thumb along her cheekbone. “You’ll drive yourself crazy playing that game,” he warned with a quirk of his lips. “Trust me, I’ve done it enough in the past six years to know.”

She nuzzled into his palm, cupping his hand in one of hers and pressing her lips to the fleshy mound beneath his thumb. He sucked in a breath, but she stopped him from leaning forward with a hand to his chest. “I’m not the same girl I was when you went back to prison. If you’re looking for that miracle, well... my soul feels a lot more shadow than light most days.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short,” he said, stroking her cheek again, but before she could protest, he continued. “Neither of us is who we were. I’d like to find out who we could be, though. Together.” He pressed forward again, and she allowed it, meeting the soft cushion of his slightly parted lips with her own in a kiss as brief as it was chaste. “What do you say, partner?” 

Instead of an answer, she pulled him back in, and the next kiss was far from chaste.

* * *

Much later, in the hazy and humid afterglow, Kate filled him in on her long con. She’d been working for years as a teller at a local bank, the same one where a very corrupt local judge had been storing a cache of gold bars he’d earned by funneling people into his brother-in-law’s private prison. 

Seth listened carefully to her plan and, when she wound down, rewarded her with a long, deep, soul-stirring kiss. “Christ, woman,” he said as he pulled back, panting against her neck and palming her backside, “I’m only a human man. There’s a refractory period, you know.”

Kate pursed her lips. “And you are almost forty,” she said with an exaggerated concern that turned into a shriek as he pinned her down on the mattress and proved his virility.

It wasn’t until they were passing a bottle of beer back and forth while cuddled up with some takeout that the plan came up again. 

“It seems solid,” Seth affirmed, “and it’ll definitely play, but we’ve gotta bring Richard in on it. He’s practically climbing the walls for a score of this magnitude.”

“Of course,” Kate said, smiling around the fork they’d also been passing back and forth as Seth pressed a kiss to her temple. She’d always assumed they’d both be in on it.

He eyed her carefully for a moment after, and then shrugged casually as he took the fork back from her. “And maybe after, we can hit the road and see where the wind takes us. Find a place to set down some roots, maybe start on the next generation of criminal masterminds.” 

A deep yearning opened up inside of her, one she’d thought she’d eradicated years before. “Is that one… Is that a dealbreaker for you?”

“No, of course not,” he said easily enough that Kate could breathe again knowing he meant it. “But if it happened…” Seth shrugged again, then glanced at her. “You don’t want kids?”

“I did, once,” she admitted, biting her lip. “But I don’t know if… I mean, technically I died, and I’m not sure I’d be able to conceive or carry to term. And if I did, what if there’s some part of Amaru left, and it touched our—our child?”

He wrapped an arm around her, holding her tight to his side. “I think if there was any part of her left, you’d know by now. If you really don’t want to risk it, we forge new identities—at least one for me—and adopt. I don’t feel strongly about passing along the Gecko genetics. Or we can try both and see where the cards fall. Or do neither. We don’t have to make any decisions right now, except one.” With one finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face up. “What do you say? Ride off into the sunset with me?”

And six months of planning and sixteen million dollars in gold bullion bars later, she did. 

**Author's Note:**

> let me know your thoughts & find me on tumblr with the same username, if you are so inclined!


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